I'm a linguistics major at school and currently I'm writing a paper on Hebrew syntax (dual form) and working on a transcription project for my phonetics class. So far it's a bisque, but my untrained ear thinks the first language I have is something Scandinavian (but something uncommon, because she was mad that so many students guessed the language last year). I'm hoping to go to Israel after I graduate and learn more Hebrew as well as work on endangered language documentation.

Yay! Hebrew speakers! You can write in Hebrew two easy ways in Windows (sorry I am not writing this in Hebrew now - not on the right computer). One, install Hebrew language as one of your windows languages and then toggle back and forth (on the task bar near the time). The other way is to own a Hebrew word processing software (Davka, Mellel), type it there, then cut and paste. Bonus for word processing software is that there's spelling correction.

adventuresoflandooe - what is "dual form"? I am not a linguist. And I think endangered languages are so interesting!

I also have lost a lot of language - was once fluent in Hebrew (not my mammeloshon, but learned as a young child) and very good in Spanish (have a college major in it, my father spoke Spanish to me as a kid) and have just lost huge amounts of vocabulary in both languages. My grammar is still good, but I don't have enough words to put into it sometimes to say anything worth saying! I'm talking to my kid in Hebrew and forcing myself to relearn useful words along the way.

Dual form-words like body parts (ידיים), things that come in pairs (אופניים) and time (שנתיים). Mostly I'm looking at the distribution of the suffix "-ayim" and how if/when numerals show up in terms of a syntactic structure.

For Hebrew typing, I prefer to use my phone since I installed a Hebrew keyboard and it has some spell check (not that I know enough to really know if it's correcting it to the right word) or else I use a Hebrew virtual keyboard because even though I can change keyboards on my computer I don't know how the letters correspond offhand.

Oh, got it. Yes, it's very weird (and very useful) that Hebrew does that (dual form) - do you know if other Semitic languages do it? I don't know that I've noticed it in Aramaic (Babylonian Talmud form, I know there are many Aramaics out there).

I don't know enough about Aramaic, but it probably has dual form. Arabic definitely has it, even more extensively than Hebrew. I'm pretty sure dual form is a holdover from pre-biblical Hebrew, which has mostly disappeared except in the afore mentioned cases.

Also, sorry for hijacking and speaking in English, I just get way excited about talking about linguistics.

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Love it! I took 5 years of French and can decipher most written passages, but I can't speak a lick of it. I took a lot less Spanish, but that's at about the same level; I think I could get that back more easily though.

Hoping that only looks garbled/backwards on my phone. Google translate doesn't really work for Hebrew, though, even when it's all in the right direction! My question was for adventuresoflandooe, though!

That was just transliterated "dual" - you can tell in Hebrew when someone is transliterating when they give you vowels or the spelling looks non-standard (extra yuds, vavs, and alephs are a giveaway, as are chipchuk tzadees, gimmels, etc.).